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Talk:Last Forever - Part Two/@comment-87.115.181.58-20140402234322
Ok essay alert, feel free to read and digest in bite-sized chunks. Ok so I've allowed the dust to settle on this and I don't really have a problem with the mother dying. Still feels a little heavy for a sitcom but it dodges the 'happily ever after' cliché and could have been very touching if done right. Likewise, I don't have a problem with Ted starting to date again, or with the children endorsing that – it's been six (presumably very hard) years, and he needs to move on and try to be happy as Tracy would surely have wanted (in fact she as good as told him to in Vesuvius). I have been shocked and saddened by the number of people claiming that Ted merely 'settled' with Tracy, even that she was a 'surrogate' for the kids Robin couldn't and wouldn't have. I hope that when these people calm down and rewatch Ted and Tracy's scenes, not to mention the now famous '45 days' speech, they will see how wrong they are. Ted moved on from loving Robin to truly love Tracy, and now he appears to be moving on from truly loving Tracy to loving Robin again. I have no problem with that as such. Nor do I have a problem in principle with Robin and Barney breaking up – they were very headstrong, self-absorbed and above all similar personalities, and in reality it may well not have worked out. What I do have a problem with is the following: The offhand way in which the mother's death was treated. Even forgetting the title and nominal premise of the show – which I can accept was mainly a 'hook' rather than a fundamental basis for it , as this is mainly a comedy about Ted goofing around with his friends, though the importance fans place on the title shouldn't be dismissed – the mother is clearly a very important character. She's married to a guy for ten years that we've known for almost as long, and she's someone we've come to care for in her own right. Quietly killing her off off screen in two minutes like Sir Scratchewan at the end of the episode is therefore not acceptable. With no disrespect to him intended, Marvin Eriksen Sr.'s death got more screen time for goodness' sake! The audience has no chance to experience the grief of her passing (as Ted certainly would have done) before we're having a new (/old) relationship thrust in our faces and are expected not only to be happy about it, but to embrace it as the show's logical and emotional climax. Unsurprisingly, many of us were not, and did not. That she is cast aside so hurriedly makes it clear that, however much she undoubtedly meant to Ted, she had become to the writers not only an afterthought but a nuisance, getting in the way of their too-long-held master plan of Ted and Robin ending up together. As the Time reviewer pointed out, this was a case study in the importance of adapting your story as your characters develop. Barney and Robin's divorce felt massively rushed, especially given the long (long) buildup to the wedding and the care taken to show them getting over their difficulties. In the end it wasn't even a previously established personal problem that broke them up, but a practical one which had never been mentioned before the wedding, and was introduced in a two minute conversation at the bar. It very much seems like the writers somehow only realized at the last minute that Barney and Robin couldn't stay together if Robin and Ted were going to end up an item, and so did a hatchet job on them they cooked up in a five minute coffee break. Barney going back to his old ways may be a realistic symptom of his (poorly constructed) breakup, but as Lily points out in his forties it's simply depressing. Throughout the series characters have struggled with breakups but always rallied eventually, but here we have no time to see that. In my mind at least it only raises one prospect: that of him growing old alone, trying to convince himself ever more brokenly that his life is still “awesome” - no matter what the episode may try to imply, simply having a child is not enough to grant you a shot at long term happiness. And for a character you've got to know over such a long time, even one who is undeniably a jerk most of the time, that's simply depressing. Even for a one night stand, the fact that we get to know absolutely nothing at all about the baby's mother is profoundly unsatisfying, and the fact that Barney even refers to her as 'no. 31' in the hospital really leaves a nasty taste. I can accept that they're unlikely to end up together but at least knowing her name would make the whole thing feel a bit more thought out. And if they don't end up together, and Barney doesn't get custody of the baby, why is he up all hours looking after her? None of the issues surrounding this were addressed satisfactorily. Lily's ambitions seemed to get sidetracked and then completely forgotten about. While Marshall's career progresses (which I'm sure we all wanted), her aspirations in the art world are never mentioned. Is she just a housewife now, and is she happy with that? If she is, that's a change of heart that would need addressing, and if she's not, it's something very sad for a main character that's brushed under the rug. I know I'm asking a lot in tying up all these loose ends but this seems like a fairly major one. Would also have been nice to hear something about the year in Rome, or at least have it acknowledged as something that happened. You know that bit at the top where I said I didn't have a problem with Future Ted's behaviour? Maybe that was a bit of an overstatement. Sure, I don't have a problem with him moving on, but I do have a problem with this: the guy spent ages telling his kids a story purporting to be about his dead wife, which is in fact about the woman he not only now fancies, but fancied before he'd even met said dead wife. If that isn't cheapening their relationship and disrespecting her memory I don't know what is. The news of the mother's death makes the kids' reactions callous at best – what kind of kids are bored or annoyed (“are we being punished?”) at having to hear stories about their dead mother? Ok, given that the Ted/Robin ending was only decided for definite in 2006 it's possible that the kids from the pilot who said that didn't “know” their mother was dead. As for their delight at the fact that Ted not only fancies someone they now know he fancied BEFORE meeting their dead mother, but also the fact that he tried to get them to accept it using the hook of hearing about said dead mother, I can only call that truly bizarre. Various other reactions come to mind (not freaked out in the slightest on hearing in the pilot that Ted has a romantic history with 'Aunt' Robin) but I want to finish this this century. Which brings me to one last thing: Ted and Robin. Ted. And. Robin. I know a lot of people have been justifying it one the basis of x, y or z clue (Marshall and Lily's bet, Victoria's farewell, the fact he was leaving New York to get away from her) but that's like justifying a murder mystery where the real culprit's alibi is watertight based on the brand of their shoes. Most of these 'clues' have nothing to do with actual interpersonal relationships and everything to do with the writers 'laying a trail' and being clever. As for Ted leaving for Chicago, you're telling me you believe he blew off a move he'd planned for weeks and really needed to make for his emotional wellbeing because he met a girl? No matter how great the girl turned out to be, if he really needed to escape Barney and Robin, he would have. The fact that he was willing to stay permanently with such little persuasion shows that the wedding and Robin's freakout had finally convinced him he was over her. Anyway, I could write a book about why Ted and Robin should not have happened, but the main reasons are these. Much of the show has been taken up with Ted maturing romantically, and this has been played out by him getting over Robin. He always loved her more than she loved him, she often treated him unfairly, their aspirations were incompatible... the list goes on. When he finally rejected her at the wedding in season nine, I could have punched the air with joy. Firstly because it meant our boy Ted was finally growing up, partly because it finally seemed to have put the rusty one-sided seesaw of his pining after her to bed. That seemed to me like the culmination of Robin's significance in the story of How I Met Your Mother – getting over her showed that Ted had reached the stage where he was ready to meet the real girl of his dreams, someone he could love and be loved by as an equal, someone who had the same deep aspirations, not just a pretty face. All this development was undone in a couple of minutes at the end of the finale. In light of it, the 'single at 40' pact, which always seemed an odd one between exes rather than as a joke between platonic friends, makes sense – infatuation with Robin was always Ted's emotional fallback state whenever he was lonely or desperate or just unsure about a current relationship. She was the pie in the sky, the one that got away, the idealized angel that she could never be in reality. And that's exactly what she is in 2030 – Ted, lonely and sad about the irretrievable loss of his wife, reverts to someone he has loved that he can, at least in theory, get back. Realizing this, it's almost funny how many people have been saying that Ted settled for Tracy because he couldn't have Robin, when really it's the exact opposite. Even if all this weren't true Ted/Robin would have been disappointing simply because it's been rehashed so many times and become boring, and as a climax doesn't in any way provide the conclusive true love that's been hinted at throughout Ted's trials and tribulations – that was clearly Tracy - but the saddest thing about it for me is that Future Ted going back to Robin isn't a recovery at all - it's a relapse, and one that I'd give a few months at best before it turns sour. So enough criticism – what ''should ''have happened then? Well, seeing as Ted and Robin should not – repeat NOT – have got together, the final moments could have been taking up with an emotional look back over Ted's life with Tracy, maybe some more of the photographs we saw all too briefly earlier, along with a callback to (credit to another commenter here) Ted's 'love is the best thing we do' speech. Even Ted simply getting the kid's blessing to start dating again generally, to move on as Tracy would have wanted, would have been fitting, and would explain his need to tell the story as catharsis. But hang on, if Ted doesn't end up with Robin, why does the mother have to die? She doesn't. That was simply a crafty way of getting her out of the way to make way for the most overplayed will-they-won't-they-who-cares in TV history. Sure, they could still kill her off – it's a tradeoff between leaving the viewers happy (this is a sitcom after all) and added emotional depth. I'd've been happy with either. I would also have been happy for Barney and Robin to divorce if it'd been handled better but again without Ted and Robin there would have been no need (another thing to thank them for). What, as I'm sure you'll have gathered, I was not happy with was this. PS If you feel a similar way I'd recommend writing something like this, it really helped me to put my finger on what I wasn't happy with and come to terms with things. Like many people I was tempted to imagine things ending differently but writing this helped me to see that all I need to do is shift the emphasis – think more about the times Ted and Tracy must have had together and how much they cared for each other and less about the fact that he finally ends up with Robin. Of course, this is the exact opposite of what the writers seemed to want us to do but I'll take a ten year loving relationship over a new maybe-relapse any day :)